Poppy Red - a Pantone Colour Choice for Spring/Summer 2013

Have you noticed Poppy Red in your local shops? It's one of the Pantone colour choices for Spring/Summer this year. 

But it didn't put in an appearance in Abergavenny until June. Maybe that's because, being the colour of fire, it's one of the 'hottest' colours, more associated with summer than spring. 

Or perhaps it was waiting for the poppies to bloom?

This oil pastel painting of a friend's garden is called, 'June Garden'. It's based on a photo I took when I had a birthday lunch with her - in June!

90th Birthday Card for a Grandmother - June Garden by helikettle
 

Whatever the reason for 'Poppy Red's' late arrival, there's a lot of it about now!

It's a colour I love - though, sadly, it doesn't suit me like it did when I was younger - so I looked it up in my big book of Colour. And here are a few of the interesting Facts about Red that I discovered.

• Like yellow and orange, red is a colour that demands attention and is hard to miss. That's probably why the post boxes and the older telephone boxes in the UK are red -

- and of course, red traffic lights mean 'Stop!', a signal you won't want to miss!

• Red is the colour at the top of the rainbow. Of interest to artists and photographers, is the fact that red appears to advance. Something red in the foreground of a painting or photo will give the image depth, especially if the background tends towards the blues, as in distant mountains.

• Red is the first colour that babies perceive. Small children are attracted to it. The red crayons are always the most worn down in the box!

• But in an environment with a lot of red, children become fractious - and maybe it's not just children! Red quickens the heart rate and stimulates the release of adrenalin. We use the phrase 'seeing red'; and 'red mist' is defined as, 'a feeling of extreme anger that clouds one's judgement temporarily'! 

• But on a more positive note, red fruits and vegetables are not only attractive but good for us. You can read what it is that makes them a healthy choice HERE. Although there are plenty of green apples and others that are speckled with yellow and orange, traditionally, the red apples were thought to be the juiciest.

• Red also stimulates the appetite - hence the heavily red-based decor of burger stalls and fast-food outlets.

• In China, Red is the colour of Luck. Just look at these Lucky Lanterns that are bought to ward off evil! So when it came to creating Chinese New Year Cards or Birthday Cards, they had to be red!

And of course, Poppies seem to be one of the most popular flowers with artists. They can be quite a challenge to paint as their colour seems to change with the light and their petals are so fragile. 

Poppies come in a variety of colours but I always think of 'red' when I think of poppies. And this collection of patterns has been one of my most popular.

Here's a blog post I wrote about this beautiful flower a while back -

Poppies

So how do you feel about Poppy Red? Is it a colour you're wearing this summer? For shoes maybe?  You'll certainly get noticed! 

But bearing in mind the effect of red on your heart rate and adrenalin, maybe stick to accents of Poppy Red in your home, rather than large, solid areas of this decidedly 'assertive' colour!

A Snake, a Frog and Man-Flu

Chinese New Year Card Snake 2013, Across the Miles by helikettle

Another rather too busy week, trying to make up for lost time, but at least I finished the Chinese Year of the Snake cards.

The snake did look good against a pitch black background but red seems to be the traditional colour for Chinese Greeting Cards and this really dark red shows up his bright colours almost as well.

Chinese Year of the Snake Necklace by helikettle

I’m amazed at how much general knowledge I’ve picked up since I’ve been designing greeting cards! I had never even thought about the Chinese Zodiac previously, in spite of having a Chinese Malaysian son-in-law. I find it difficult to find, or even design birthday cards for someone of his age and gender so I think that, from now on, some variation on his Chinese Zodiac sign will make that easier!

Born in 1977, Year of the Snake, Birthday Card by helikettle

I still have a huge backlog of floral card designs to upload so this weekend I decided to forego my Saturday painting time to help with the catch-up.

This little poorly frog that I painted a while ago isn’t suitable for as many different cards as the floral ones so I’m hoping that getting those uploaded will give me time to upload at least some of the December Birthday Poinsettia cards as well.

                  A case of Man-Flu, do you think?


BLACKBIRD UPDATE

My resident blackbird parents are doing an excellent job of protecting their second brood of the season from the crows that gather on my chimney pots. This week, it seemed that whenever I heard a lot of commotion and looked out, I saw a crow in retreat! At times it was like watching old footage of war-time fighter plane dogfights, with both parents taking part and the crow invariably coming off worst!

It’s amazing how closely the pattern of events followed the first time around, with a lot of twittering coming from the nest for a couple of days, then two ‘chubbies’ huddling together on the side of the nest, followed by a day of Father Blackbird broadcasting warnings all day, from the time I opened my curtains in the morning to his solitary watch from his sentry post up high on my garage roof as the sun went down.

I haven’t seen the young ones out on my lawn yet, but I’m sure they’re down in the bushes, judging by the way the parents are keeping an eye out for them and heading off any likely danger.

It’s wonderful to have such a drama unfolding before my eyes!

Greeting Cards for Eid and Chinese New Year

Here are a couple of the Eid and Ramadan Cards I made from the mosque in the moonlight.

Moonlit Mosque Eid Card From Our Home to Yours by helikettle

Mosque by Moonlight Ramadan Card, Across the miles by helikettle

And I’m afraid that, despite resorting to a set-square at one point, my straight lines are still not as straight as maybe they should be! I can’t explain how they come to be a bit wobbly so there’s nothing much I can do about it, short of avoiding designs that involve buildings! I’m not too bothered, though, by the slightly upward-sloping ‘horizontals’  - who’s to say that this mosque wasn’t built on sloping ground?

Just after I published last week’s blog post, my laptop started doing all sorts of strange and worrying things. My computer-savvy neighbour ran out of ideas and gave up trying to sort it for me, suggesting I might need a new laptop. ARRRGGGGHHHH! 

But luckily, my son came to the rescue in the evening and, although he lives more than 200 miles away, he was able to sort out most of the mayhem, though he only managed to get Outlook Express working again yesterday.

Later I discovered that Monday's problems weren’t the direct result of Sunday’s ‘Daonol’ Trojan but were caused by a new piece of ‘Scare-ware’ – it certainly scared the living daylights out of me! - called ‘FakeSysdef’. I spent the rest of the week scanning and re-scanning with various antivirus and malware programs until I was completely  confident that it was out of my system!

So it’s been a very ‘interesting’ week!

Instead of uploading designs in between more phonecalls and visits from the Community Police and the real police about the graffiti, I’ve been working on new designs while the scanners were doing their work. And it has felt like luxury to take my time, in the knowledge that I couldn’t rush on to the uploading stage as I usually do! In fact, it’s pretty boring watching a scanner’s progress so I was glad to have some other work to get on with in the meantime!

Even though I tend to work quite fast, I could never have drawn and painted this Chinese New Year card design for the Year of the Snake in my usual Saturday afternoon painting slot! So it was a good opportunity to tackle something with a lot of detail - though no straight lines! - while I had time on my side.

It still needs a fair bit of tidying up and I still have to decide on a background colour and font. I’ll have a lot of computer work to catch up with this week but I’ll try to have Sammy Snake finished for my next post.

Yesterday morning a group of young lads, from the Youth Offenders Programme, I think, came and painted over the graffiti and I now have a nice bright white side wall, instead of the grey roughcast that I’d never got around to painting when my extension was built. So things are looking up!

I'm really much more comfortable painting big - the bigger, the better. So, when the council didn't appear to be dealing with it, I was sorely tempted to go out and paint some sort of graffiti of my own on this inviting expanse of wall! A view of the mountains, maybe . . . ?